


Ambivalence

by Trismegistus (Lebateleur)



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-03-25
Updated: 2005-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:20:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22226281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lebateleur/pseuds/Trismegistus
Summary: L and Light and ambivalence on a rooftop in Shibuya.Written for the 30_lemons LJ community, Theme 18: The Mile High Club, it takes place directly after the events of Page 38, although there are no real spoilers.
Relationships: L/Yagami Light
Kudos: 29





	Ambivalence

The night breeze blows gently across his face, ruffling his hair around the collar of his shirt. It’s never truly dark in Tokyo - or truly quiet - but up here twenty-three floors above the streets below, the traffic sound is a only faint murmur and if Light closes his eyes he can almost pretend he’s in the forest somewhere. 

Even with his eyes shut he’s still keenly aware of L’s presence. The chain hangs slack from their wrists and when Light opens his eyes and looks at it, the moonlight silvers on its links, making it beautiful. 

L is standing a few feet away, staring motionlessly at the city beneath them, and he seems an entirely different person from the L Light knows. L stands relaxed, hand thrust into a pocket, hips slung slightly to one side, and Light realises that when L isn’t slouching he’s a good fifteen centimeters taller than Light. 

L turns his head slowly as he watches the city below, and Light follows the line of L’s gaze as it sweeps across the bright neon lights of Shibuya. It must be close to three in the morning, but this part of Tokyo never really sleeps. Car headlights illuminate the congested streets and the faint _thud thud thud_ of dance music is intermittently audible as club doors open and close. The breeze carries the genial chatter of drunken voices to Light’s ears. The traffic light at the station intersection changes and a waiting crowd of pedestrians surges forward. A woman shrieks with laughter from somewhere within their midst. 

A single star twinkles faintly through the smog in the night sky above. Light can’t exactly say why it catches his attention, but he marvels at the futility of its persistence in shining here. He is suddenly very lonely standing on the rooftop of this empty highrise in a place that is otherwise so full of life. He looks at the crowds on the streets below and wonders why he isn’t down there as well, surrounded by people living ordinary lives. Not one person out of that crowd knows that he’s standing up here, right now, watching. He shivers with the isolation of it, and wonders exactly where everything went wrong, why he’s no longer just another college student skipping out on lectures to sleep late or go talk to girls. 

But even still, there’s a sense of gratitude that he is here, living a life so different from anyone else in this city. He’s grateful for that, and for L’s presence too, because although L is eccentric and frightening and clearly insane, he’s unlike any other human being on earth, and Light is glad that for whatever reason, he’s been given the opportunity to observe L in the flesh. 

L feels Light watching him, and turns to look at him directly, huge staring eyes like ink stains in the pale face. As always, Light is faintly startled by the directness of L’s gaze, the way he only looks at you to search for something and makes no attempt to conceal it. 

Perhaps L too has been affected by the atmosphere up here, but there’s a different quality to that gaze tonight. It’s as intent as ever, but the search is missing. Tonight, L merely looks at Light to look. 

Ironically, it is Light who now searches L’s face. It’s a strange face, one that switches rapidly from unreadable to expressive, juvenile to mature, in the space of seconds. It suddenly occurs to Light that he doesn’t know how old L truly is. He considers, then reaches a conclusion - L is his age, or a little older; he’s not exactly sure how he knows this, but he is certain of it. 

At the moment, L’s face appears to belong to a man in his mid-twenties, perhaps half a decade older than Light. The eyes, unblinking as always, are void of their usual suspicion and fiery curiosity, but in their place is something almost like wisdom in its stillness. It, and the way L is standing, give him a gravity he doesn’t usually possess while crouching in predation over the computer screens downstairs, thumb inserted into his mouth. His white shirt seems to phosphoresce faintly in the moonlight. Captivated, Light stands still and looks. 

L stands still as well, and looks back. His eyes are depthless, and they loom to fill his face in the darkness. Looking at them, Light is struck by how vulnerable L seems when separated from the exoskeleton of surveillance and security technology he's constructed around himself below. He lifts a hand to brush the hair from his eyes; the wind brushes it back into them. “What is it, Ryuzaki?” 

L’s eyes become sad, but it’s an impersonal, objectless sadness. “I’m conflicted, Yagami-kun,” he says in his soft, inflectionless voice. 

“Conflicted?” Light echoes reflexively. 

L’s face and eyes empty of all emotion. They flicker from Light’s face to the chain that hangs from their wrists. “If I throw myself over the edge of this roof, Kira will die.” The sweep of L’s head describes an arc in the air as he turns to look back out over the city. The movement is graceful, leonine. 

Light is mesmerized by the curve of L’s neck, strong and full beneath the shaggy hair. His throat is strangely dry. “Why don’t you?” he whispers. 

“Because I don’t want to die.” L gives a small shrug as if to say, that’s all. 

Light takes a step toward L, setting the chain into motion. It sways gently, like a pendulum. L watches it from the corner of one eye. 

“I’m not Kira,” Light says, and wills all the earnesty, all the conviction he possesses, into his eyes. If he can ever make L believe this, it is going to happen up here, tonight on this rooftop. 

L looks at him, the full-on gaze this time, a faintly sardonic smile teasing at one corner of his mouth. It's another expression Light has never seen him wear before. He’s once again assailed by the sense that L really is a different person, up here. 

“You are not Kira _now,_ Yagami-kun,” L corrects, and now it’s Light’s turn to avert his eyes, although his frustration is palpable while L’s might as well not exist for all the outward signs he gives of it. 

Light lifts a hand in a wordless gesture of aggravation, then lets it drop back to his side. It’s the hand with the chain, and its rattling jars against his eardrums. “Why did you bring us up here, anyway?” he asks, to see if L will say, To throw us off the roof. 

L’s presence becomes suddenly thoughtful. “I like it up here,” he says. “It’s like being closer to the sky.” Light is struck both by the honesty of L’s response, and the fact that L has given him an answer which hints however faintly at the personality beneath the blank face. 

Light’s gaze turns to the edge again. He looks straight down this time, and thinks about how far it would be to fall, about how many people Kira has killed and how he’ll keep killing even if L decides to pitch them over, although neither he nor L will be in a position to care any longer in the event that L does. 

L takes a step closer and Light does not need to look to know that he’s done it, because the movement travels up to his body through the chain as though it were actual living nerve tissue instead of cold steel. 

L takes another step, bringing them shoulder to shoulder, and when the wind changes direction, the hair that whips across Light’s face is L’s as well as his own. _I’ve just now realised. All this time, I… wanted you to be Kira._

He raises a hand to the bruise on L’s cheekbone, the clotted blood a faintly darker purple than the shadows that hide L’s face. “Does it hurt?” he asks, and L shrugs as if to say, Does it matter? 

The bruise matches the color of L’s sinkhole eyes. Those eyes aren’t empty now, but they aren’t filled with anything Light recognizes, and he thinks, It _is_ like drowning, looking at you, and then he stops thinking. L’s lips are soft and pliant, and they make soft wet sounds in the night against Light’s own. 

Light expects the body that goes with them to be soft to match, but instead he finds it toned and sinewy, the body of a tennis champion beneath the shapeless, baggy clothing. 

They’ve put their arms around one another, and the chain chaffs against their torsos as they caress. L approaches this activity the same way he does an investigation - kisses, questions, considers, withdraws, attacks from a different angle, and a part of Light can’t help but find it amusing. He raises a hand and brushes the hair from L’s broad forehead, traces the pad of one finger across the strangely hairless brow bone and over equally lashless eyes. 

L’s hand runs up over Light’s chest and along his neck, thumb pressing experimentally against the adam’s apple, the pressure point behind the ear, and Light shivers into L’s touch. The kissing deepens. 

He runs his own hands up and down L’s back, his shoulders, the nearly flat buttocks beneath the worn jeans. Then he reaches under the hem of L’s shirt and runs them directly over the warm skin of L’s back. L’s tongue is moist within his mouth, his lips swollen and bruised from sucking. The wet _click click_ of their kissing blends with the wind and the traffic sounds below. 

They sway together, unsteady, still standing only because the other’s body is there to offer support. Light is vaguely aware that L is guiding them inexorably toward the edge and he thinks, So we’re going to go over after all, and then marvels at the soft thickness of L’s hair. 

L presses them both back until the sharp concrete of the ledge bites into Light’s calves. He braces himself against it, takes L’s face in both his hands and kisses him fiercely. If I’m going to go over, he thinks, I might as well do this first. He wonders what his father will think when he sees their bodies crumpled on the pavement below, whether he’ll think Light or L was the one to pitch them over. 

Then his legs give out and his weight carries them both to the ground. L pushes him up against the barrier, then partway over it, kissing and kissing. The whole of the world narrows to swirling vertigo, the wet of L’s mouth, and the single star still twinkling stubbornly in the sky above. Hands slide under clothing and over skin, and eventually Light finds himself on his stomach with L on top. 

He grips the edge with white knuckles and tries to keep breathing. The sensation of L inside him is painful, but necessary. L moves slowly and fumblingly; neither of them is very experienced, but it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that L is within him, focusing on _him_ and him alone, and not the possibility that he might be Kira. 

It’s intoxicating, being the object of such single-minded attention, even more intoxicating than the sheer drop beneath him, even more than the unfamiliar sensations that speed along his synapses with each of L’s thrusts. He shuts his eyes and takes the lead, grinding himself into L’s bony hips. 

L responds by bucking wildly back into him, but at a different pace entirely, and here, just as in every other aspect of their lives, they are at odds with one another, both of them pursuing the same goal but unwilling to surrender any ground to the other. 

The wind blows cool across Light’s flushed cheeks. He grips the ledge as tightly as he can and leans over to look at the people milling about on the streets below. Such ordinary, normal people. He wonders what crimes they’ve committed, what they’ve got to hide. He wonders if even now, some of them are worried that Kira might hold their fate in his hands. He wonders what they’d think if they knew the only two people who could catch Kira were above them at this moment, chained together and fucking. He wonders what they’d think if they knew those people were two teenage boys. 

L is moving faster and faster, drawing deep, rasping breathes that grate in Light’s ears. He moves faster yet, frantically jamming himself into Light’s body, and then moans, his hands slip, lose their grip on Light’s sweaty waist, and he collapses on top of Light’s back, knocking the wind from Light’s lungs. 

The sudden, unexpected weight is enough to upset Light’s delicate balance and he pitches forward, thinking that’s it, there’s no way I can catch us now, and the thought is enough to send him over the edge entirely, but in the end it’s not the physical one, and it’s only his semen that falls, leaving a white, sticky mess on his legs and the concrete in front of him. 

They remain in shocked silence for a moment, motionless as if paralysed and still hanging halfway over the ledge, before L lifts himself from Light’s back and they lower themselves, very cautiously, to the ground. 

They sit silently side by side with their backs to the barrier, chain pooling limply on the ground between them, and struggle to get their breaths back. The night air, once so welcoming to Light’s heated skin, becomes chilly and then uncomfortably cold before either of them stirs. 

L stands first, and Light notices bemusedly that his perpetually wrinkled clothing offers no telltale signs to give away what they’ve done up here. He, with his carefully ironed slacks and crisp shirt, is not so fortunate. 

L raises his head and looks for a moment at the same star that’s caught Light’s attention throughout the night. It’s father west now, closer to the horizon and much harder to see through the haze in the city sky. “We should go downstairs, Yagami-kun,” he says. 

Light stands and gives a shaky laugh. “So we aren’t going over the edge tonight after all,” he says, and runs a trembling hand over his face. 

L’s eyes, when he raises his own to meet them, are black, unreadable pools. “Not going over the edge?” he echoes softly. “Isn’t that what we’ve just done?”


End file.
